Hotel Rwanda

Narasimha's employer gives a day off for employee's birthdays. I think you can take it anytime you want, but Narasimha actually took his on Friday since his boards were on Thursday so we haven't spent any real time together for a while, and his birthday was on Saturday. It was nice to have an extra day off - we didn't do much of anything. We did rent a few movies and watched in the evenings this weekend. One of them was Hotel Rwanda.

Hotel Rwanda is a movie that tells the story of a Hutu man, and his Tootsie wife and community of friends, and their mixed children, as they all try to survive the genocide of the Tootsies by the Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. The actual movie I think was done pretty tastefully. There wasn't a whole lot of swearing, and we don't even have a special DVD player. The actual blood-and-guts gore was kept to a minimum, but you do see a fair amount of violence, and lots and lots of dead bodies. I have heard before of the conflict in Rwanda between the Hutus and the Tootsies. I remember being in about Junior High when all this was happening, and they covered it a little on the news show the school made us watch every day in third hour. I do not remember, however, the extreme devastation in hearing about this ever before. The movie showed how massive the killing was, and as sad as that is, add to it how the rest of the world stood by and offered almost no support/relief. The victims kept waiting for the UN, and the US, and no one came. The movie just broke my heart to watch - honestly, I am rarely a "cry-er." There were a few times in this movie that I couldn't help it.

Then that got me thinking - how many times in history have there been "genocide" based alone on some physical feature, or some way that one group of people is different from another (not better, just different). In this movie they said one time that the way they tell the difference between the Hutus and Tootsies is by how wide their nose is. And in the Holocaust, people were practically distinguished by having brown hair and eyes, as opposed to blonde and blue. Think of all the places around the world that massive groups of people have been killed without good reason, or something like the supposed guilt of their ancestors, or even accidentally choosing to live on the "wrong" plot of land. Russia, Germany and Poland, Scotland, the United States even, Rwanda, many many African nations, Afghanistan, China and Tibet, right now in Darfur, Lebanon, Israel. That's not nearly all of them. This problem spans the globe far and wide, from our own back yard to every continent, to many many countries, to millions and million of individual lives around the world.

Even when we know of these things, what do we do? What can we do? So obviously most of us can't just pack our weapon of choice in our suitcase and fly over and fight with the good guy. But politically, can we lean on our government a little to take action and try to stop the fighting? Protect those who have no protection? There was another part of the movie where there was a reporter from a western nation. He went out and video taped the vast devastation, and a woman who was being hunted was saying yeah, send that video back to your country - that will get people caring about what is happening here. And the videographer said unfortunately no, they will see it, and think oh, that's too bad, and then they will go on eating their dinner.

I know from our safe living rooms thousands of miles away, with the smallest of small threat of being shot or killed out of hatred tonight, it is hard for us to get involved. It's hard even to know what's going on with whatever filtered TV news we have available. I guess just watching this movie made me want to do all I can - even if that's not much. I will do research on the internet to find out what's really going on (but not believe everything I read). I will watch different news stations to get the most information, keeping in mind all news is likely skewed or tainted or biased. I will watch International news stations (BBC, etc.) to see if what I'm getting from the American stations is painting a comprehensive picture. In the upcoming elections, I will find out which of the candidates are willing to talk about human rights in other countries, and who desires to keep the best International relations (generally the Dems). When deciding who to support with dollars given to charity, I will research organizations that help people in these grim situations. And last but hardly least, I will pray for those in suffering today. That someone will reach out to them with love, a helping hand, and most of all, the name of Jesus Christ in their moment of suffering and need.

I started thinking, what if someone in our community today picked some random physical/personal attribute that was somehow deemed "superior" and then decided to kill everyone who was different. What if the difference was blue vs. brown eyes, big vs. small feet, the ability to do complex math equations in one's head, or even preference of eating dessert before or after a meal. I know I am being a little facetious. But there are people in our world who have lost their lives for far less. Who would I lose - family, friends, me? Something to think about...